Thursday, July 30, 2015

Into the Land of the Elves: Number Six

The
Diary of Miss Aidyn Hall, human by blood only

August
11

4:42 PM

Number Six

I understand. I understand why the Jadeites and
the tree elves hate humans; pushy, demanding, overbearing, impulsive, obnoxious, entitled humans. I have no doubt that it was
the humans who provoked the animosity. Humans provoke everybody and everything.
It’s all that they know how to do. They strong-arm their way into where they’re
not wanted or welcome. They are mindless pack animals of the highest degree,
and anything out of the ordinary that goes against the pack is cause for
endless scrutiny and absolutely no respect or privacy. Nobody is allowed to
have secrets among humans, unless those secrets are approved. Nobody is allowed
to have a personal life, unless that personal life is approved. Nothing is left
alone and everything is there to be disturbed. Meanwhile, the Jadeites just go
with the flow, perfectly content to leave anything alone that does not pose a
threat. They never feel the need to impede upon others’ lives, and have the
ability to show that they care for others without scrutinizing them like a bug
under a microscope. That being said, there’s a point when “caring about
someone” becomes more about appeasing the feelings of the “carer” than about
the well-being of the person they claim to care about. That’s never a problem
with the Jadeites, but among the humans it is far more common than it should
be.

The Jadeites are naturally
inquisitive, and yet they never feel the need to know everything. They know
that it’s better to leave something alone than to upset it and yourself in an
attempt to know everything there is to know about it. Not everything needs to
be known, everything has its secrets, and the Jadeites understand that it’s not
necessarily your place to uncover those secrets in the name of knowledge. When
does the pursuit of knowledge become less about the information and more about
what you gain from it? I know that
when I discovered the Greenwood and the Jadeites, my desire to learn everything about them was entirely
based around personal gain. Of course, the genuine curiosity was there, but for
the most part I just wanted the information necessary to publish my great
novel. It wasn’t until I abandoned these prospects and focused all of my time
with the Jadeites on just being a friend that they actually began to accept me.
Of course they didn’t trust me, an outsider who was forever jotting everything
down in a notepad, poking her nose into everything and trying way too hard to
see too much. It even got to the point where I was stealing from them just to find things out that I wasn’t meant to
find out in the first place!

That’s the way humans are, I realize
now. They are inherently self-absorbed creatures that think it is their
god-given right to push their way into anything they want to, even if it means
disrupting the peaceful lives of others. They may call eachother friends, they
may claim to care about eachother, but in a way even their friendship is
tainted with selfishness.

Apple Blossom and I were playing tag
near the magnolia archway, and I still don’t know who had the greater advantage
there; my legs were longer and could work like springs if I really wanted them
to, but Apple Blossom maintained her usual fox-like swiftness. In the end, I
think we may have had an equal advantage as well as equal difficulty in trying
to keep up with one-another. Apple Blossom had tagged me as I was attempting a
flying sprint through some huckleberry bushes, and she darted off as quickly as
she had shown up. I did my best to follow after her, pumping my legs as fast as
I could. “I’m gonna get you, you little fox!” I said in the voice of a crooked
old witch, and her giggling gave away her location just as I had planned.

We made our way through a grove of
boxy cedar trees, when all of a sudden she halted in her tracks as if an actual
witch had hit her with a petrifying spell. “What is it?” I said, slowing down
to a jog as I caught up with her. “Apple Blossom, are you okay?” I laid my hand
on her shoulder and felt her trembling. Something was rustling around at the
magnolia archway, and I followed her terrified eyes to see what it was.

It was Katie! Katie was right there, ducking her head under the guardians’
webs and even picking them aside with her fingers as if she had any right to! “Get
behind me, Apple Blossom,” I said urgently, but by then she had already
scurried behind one of the cedars like a frightened rabbit. I looked around for
the taggers, but if there were any around, I couldn’t see them. A guardian must
have jumped at Katie, as she shrieked and frantically beat at her arm and
shoulder. “Get off, get off!” she hollered, and nearly tripped over a fallen
branch in her desperate attempt to shake off the spider. She was a total wreck,
and I knew I had to do something about her before she got hurt or alerted any
other Jadeites to her presence. I darted over to the Grand Elder Guardian’s
lowered web and called out, “Katie!”

She spun around abruptly, and
without thinking about it I crawled under the Grand Elder Guardian’s web and
searched the ground for the spider. If Katie had killed a guardian of the Greenwood, she was going to be in the deepest trouble
of her life. Thankfully, I found it rapidly crawling away from her foot and I
scooped it up. “What in the world are you doing, Aidyn?” Katie asked as I
examined the spider for injuries and gently set it back on the branch of its
magnolia tree. “Are you trying to be a spider whisperer now?”

I whirled on her. “I thought I told
you not to come looking for me, fool!”

“That’s exactly the kind of thing
you say when I should come looking
for you!” Katie insisted.

I was about to fire off something
absolutely filled to the brim with curse words, when I heard the rustling of a
cedar tree and I turned around to see Apple Blossom crawling out from her
hiding spot. My heart stopped. In that moment, I hoped that I had spontaneously
developed telepathic powers. Go away,
Apple Blossom! I willed with my mind. Please
go away! But there she was. Katie was looking right at her, and she was
looking right back. She took a few steps forward and peered through the threads
of the Grand Elder Guardian’s web. “Do…do you…know Aidyn?” she asked in a shaky
little voice.

Instead of answering her, Katie
turned to me. “Aidyn, who in the world is that?”
I wanted to push her away, but I knew that wouldn’t get anything done.
She’d just push back, and right now she was getting dangerously close to the
web of another guardian, all set and ready to tear it down. “She’s an elf,
Katie!” I said abruptly.

“You’re lying,” she hastily
retorted. “Who is it really?”

“Katie, she’s a freaking elf!” I rubbed my temple with the tips
of my fingers. “What else would she be?! Do you think this is an elaborate
prank or something? You think I just dressed up some random little girl, took
her out into the woods, and planted her here on the off chance that you would
come out here and find us? Look at
her, Katie, does she look entirely human to you?!”

“But there aren’t any elves!” Katie
insisted. My god, how could anybody be that stupid? “Katie, you’re looking at one!” I said, raising my
voice in total exasperation. “There’s…” But I was interrupted. Something zoomed
past me, making a “whoosh” in the air as it ran by. I looked up, and all I saw
was a blur that darted past Katie and disappeared almost as soon as I had laid
eyes on it. Katie yelped and lost her balance on her right foot, and I reached
out to hold and steady her. Apple Blossom’s eyes were fixed in the direction in
which the thing had run off. “Something just pulled at me!” Katie cried. “It
grabbed at my pants leg and pulled my ankle!”

“Roll up your jeans,” I instructed
her.

“Aidyn, this is crazy!” she complained,
but she followed the instruction anyway. “Oh, there’s something stuck to me!”
Reaching into the fold of her jeans leg with two fingers, she pulled out a
round, flat green jade stone. For the second time that day, my heart stopped. I
looked to Apple Blossom, and her eyes were as wide as an owl’s.

“What is this thing?” Katie looked
at the jade as if it were so much more than a jade. The jade was carved with a
few scribbly lines, just like my own, and I didn’t have to know the language to
know what they meant: the number six. Katie was the sixth human to come by the Greenwood, the sixth human to be tagged.

“Katie,” I said with all of the
urgency I could manage, “just forget about it! Don’t worry about what it is,
all right? Get rid of it, and most importantly do not come back here! You can’t
come back here! They don’t like having humans around!”

“But you’re…” Katie began, and I
held up my hand to stop her. “I’m different,
Katie!” I told her. “It’s different for me! It’s not going to be different for
you! Please just stay away!”

“But how can I stay away?” Katie
asked, looking upon the little tag with a curiosity that infuriated me. Would
nothing I said penetrate her thick skull? Was she going to assert her ability to
meddle around where she wasn’t welcome no matter what I told her? She had no
right, and I was one hundred and ten percent done with her. I grabbed her by
both arms, and she yelped. “Aidyn, what the hell are you doing?!” I gave her a
hard shove that sent her stumbling backwards and tripping over herself in a
desperate attempt to regain her footing. Apple Blossom shrieked, and I must say
that until then I had forgotten she was even watching. “Get out of here, Katie,” I said, and for a second I was horrified
by the sound of my own voice. I had no idea that I could sound so wrathful.
Katie took a few steps back before stopping in her tracks, looking at me like a
child who had suddenly and unexpectedly been spanked. “Aidyn, what is going on
with you? Why are…”

“I said GET OUT!” I charged her like
an irate moose, and she ran off, spouting off obscenities that turned to
unintelligible hollers in the distance. Apple Blossom began to sob, then, and
my fury melted away as I ran to her side to comfort her. “It’s all right,
sweetheart,” I said as I held her and stroked her hair. “Don’t cry, dear.
Everything’s okay now.” But I felt like crying myself, because I knew that
everything was not going to be okay. Katie isn’t going to stay away. She will
be back and she won’t care about all of the trouble she will be causing,
because that’s the way she is. That’s the way that humans are.

About Me

I'm Star Nova, and I like to tell stories. This blog used to be more topical, but then just became a place where I could easily hold my stories. I have several short stories and two big works in progress, as well as some old crap and some pending revisions OF some old crap.
I write in order to share how I see the world, from my own perspective. If you're here, you're probably here from Tumblr or Twitter. I hope you like my stories. And if you don't, I hope you at least read them before you decide that. (: